Frozen carbonated beverages (FCB's) are a relatively new type of soft drink, but they appear to have caught-on well and to have built a strong and growing market. In general, this product combines some of the more desired features of conventional carbonated soft drinks and soft serve frozen confections (such as soft serve fruit-flavor sherbet). One brand of frozen carbonated beverage which may be most widely known is the Slurpee.RTM. product of Southland Corporation's 7-Eleven Stores. Generally the beverage is dispensed from a machine which at least to a consumer looks no different from a dispenser for conventional soft serve frozen confections. However, the beverage generally is dispensed into cups, rather than into a choice of cups or edible cones, and usually is sipped through a straw as carbonated slush although sometimes it is also spooned out and/or its partially melted fraction imbibed as a liquid.
In fact, conventional apparatus for making and dispensing non-carbonated soft-serve frozen confections, milkshakes and the like usually cannot be successfully used as-is to make and dispensing frozen carbonated beverages. The basic difference which needs to be accommodated is that in the manufacture and dispensing of FCB's, the product is injected with considerable gas pressure, e.g. 40 p.s.i., for the purpose of dissolving and entraining carbonating gas in the beverage. Accordingly adapters have been devised for injecting carbon dioxide into the mix, and/or for accommodating the introduction of pre-carbonated mix into the freezing chamber. For instance, a Procon carbonator pump from Standex International, Salem, N.H., can be connected to a conventional milkshake-making machine. Various faucet modifications have been proposed for dispensing FCB from the making machine.
When FCB's were introduced, it was the general practice for all dispensing from the machines to be performed by store/restaurant employees for the customers and highly unusual for the machines to be located where or under such conditions that the customers could or might be expected to serve themselves. That practice is now changing and it seems that the marketplace would favor the introduction of FCB dispensers which could be consumer-operated, much as are coin-operated soda machines and the like. Heretofore, the faucets of most, if not all FCB dispensers have been tricky enough to operate that a certain amount of prior training in use has been practically a necessity, except where trained operators were always at hand to offer guidance and to clean up the results of inadvertent spillage by customers.
In any event, a need has arisen for a better facuet for FCB dispensers, one that will better control flow from the FCB-making machines, to make dispensing easier and more accurate, especially for people not familiar with FCB-making machines.